Embarrassingly enough, it takes them almost two weeks to notice. Well, that’s not quite true. They notice the suspicious lack of yeerk activity in less than a week, but mostly in the form of Marco declaring it to be “quiet… too quiet” and Jake wondering what the heck has the yeerk inside Tom acting so morose all of a sudden. It takes almost two weeks of Tobias lurking over known Yeerk Pool entrances wondering where the heck the controllers are, two weeks of Ax mentioning that the internet chatter is more full of yeerk talk than usual, two weeks of Erek reporting no Sharing meetings anywhere in the country, and two weeks of Cassie telling them to appreciate the break for a change… and then Rachel snaps.
Specifically, she gets fed up with the tension, marches up to Tom in the middle of a school hallway, and (poking him in the chest every so often for emphasis) demands to know whether the entire Yeerk Empire has suddenly gone into hibernation or— or what.
Tom’s response is to grab her by the arm and drag her into Chapman’s office.
Rachel fights him with literal teeth and literal nails, of course — right up until the moment Tom turns to Chapman and goes “See? She remembers that there were brain-stealing aliens too. That proves I’m not crazy.”
Rachel stares at Tom in shock. Chapman heaves a put-upon sigh and says, “I never said you were crazy. I said that we should all probably forget it ever happened and move on, because if we told anyone then we’d appear to be crazy.”
“But…” Tom frowns, petulant. “But if we, like, got a reporter to talk about the yeerks, and enough of us agreed about what happened…”
“Then no doubt the school district would send gas inspectors out to determine why so many people in this town are hallucinating,” Chapman drawls. “The yeerks are all dead, their bodies entirely decomposed in the Earth atmosphere by now. The nonhuman hosts were last seen wandering off in search of that mystical colony of free hork-bajir somewhere in the mountains. I don’t have a way to contact the andalites. All of which means that the only proof you have is a rapidly-evaporating puddle of kandrona under the school.” He sighs. “Any reporter with an ounce of sense will blame the fumes from that for the gas leak, and we’re back to square one.”
“The yeerks… are dead?” Rachel asks.
“How did you not already know this, if you were a controller?” Tom says.
She should probably wait and confirm this with Jake and the others. Probably. But then, she’s never been very good at waiting. “Because I’m one of the morphers who’s been fighting them.”
After all that, Rachel doesn’t even get to tell the others the news. Because she bursts into their meeting only to find that Toby is already standing there looking grave, and Cassie’s mouth is hanging open. By the time Toby is done telling her story — and answering all 500 of Marco’s suspicious questions — most of the details come out.
A few days ago, close to a thousand hork-bajir and taxxons had simply wandered into the free hork-bajir valley. Toby had assumed an attack, until one of the taxxons, who gave the unusual-for-a-taxxon name of Arbron, had explained that none of them were controllers. Because, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, all the yeerks simply dropped dead a few days back.
Toby, not being born yesterday, had forced the entire cavalcade to wait three days under constant guard before letting them into the valley. They passed. All signs point to the conclusion that they’re telling the truth: the yeerks inside them all have died without warning.
Marco, being Marco, maintains that this is all some elaborate yeerk conspiracy. Until Rachel shamefacedly mentions that she blurted the whole thing out to Tom. Until Tom, muttering about their questionable taste in tourism destinations, takes them through a Yeerk Pool entrance under the car wash and shows them the cavern: empty, echoing, deserted. Filled with detritus and congealing kandrona and abandoned junk.
Cassie becomes the one to voice the question that’s been on all their minds, later that afternoon as they sit around her barn. “So…” she says slowly. “Now what?”
“We’ve gotta tell someone, right?” Rachel looks around at them. “Just pick any adult, show them that we can morph, and then…”
<And then come the conspiracy theorists,> Tobias points out. <Then come the social workers. Then come the paparazzi. Is that really what we want?>
<Prince Jake? What do you recommend?>
Jake runs his hands through his hair. “Honestly? I want to go home. I want to finish my stupid English essay, since I guess I’ve got time for it now. I want to go to the UCSB game on Saturday. I want to…” He takes a breath. “To catch up with my brother. Maybe even get some sleep for once, while I’m at it.”
They vote on it, for lack of a better solution. Rachel and Marco are all for telling the world. Cassie thinks they should wait on a decision until they talk to Toby and some of the ex-hosts about what everyone else wants. Tobias and Jake seem exhausted even by the thought of the media circus that would ensue. Ax, as always, abstains.
“Okay,” Jake says. “I guess that’s two votes in favor of sharing our story, three against. We’ll go with Cassie’s suggestion: hold off for now, revisit the idea after talking to the others.”
Things get back to normal. Kind of. Sure.
Rachel punches a girl she doesn’t even know in the face after said girl rudely ignores Marco. And then, when Marco makes a breathy comment about Rachel defending his honor, she punches him too. Detention is a relief; it’s high time someone punished her.
Cassie breaks down crying in the middle of dinner for, really, no reason at all, and finds herself crying harder when her parents hover and worry and offer explanations: it’s about a boy, it’s about the goose last week they couldn’t save, it’s about hormones.
Tobias wavers. He practices, a little bit at a time. Pretends to be human long enough to walk downtown. Grows fingers and dull eyes to see what happens when he rings Rachel’s doorbell like any other boy on the planet. Each time he goes back. Each time giving up human shape feels more like disappointment, more like relief.
Jake wanders the house in restless circles for six or more hours a night, trying to wear himself out so that the nightmares won’t wake him yet again. Sometimes he hears the crisp pock-pock-pock of a basketball on concrete outside, and feels less alone.
Marco’s dad comments on how many evenings they’ve spent together with a reheated pizza and the latest Madden. Marco brushes it off with a comment about earning enough brownie points to get a car.
Ax, with a little help from some commandeered yeerk tech, calls home again. He tries to tell his parents everything that happened, and finds he doesn’t have the words. They assure him they’re coming for him the moment they get permission from the Electorate, and he tries to believe that that time is coming soon.
Ten days later, when it seems that every single trace of yeerk activity really has disappeared for good, a kid with messy blond hair and soft grey eyes walks into their high school to enroll. There are some inconsistencies in his paperwork, of course — he lists his uncle as his legal guardian in spite of said uncle being less than a year older than him, he gives his home address as a P.O. box downtown, he has no transcripts from previous schools — but the vice principal proves willing to overlook all of those issues in light of everything that this kid has done to keep the planet safe. Chapman even signs off on the form claiming that Tobias requires access to a private bathroom once every two hours all day long for unspecified medical needs. It feels, in some ways, like the first true commitment to the idea that this peace might just last.
Which is why Marco corners Tom the next day in school. “So,” Marco says, “I had a question. And you probably don’t know the answer, but you’re like, my second-to-last resort before Chapman, so let’s go with you’re kinda my last hope. Anyway, I was just wondering, in case you happened to know—”
“Supervising the invasion of the Anati system,” Tom says over him, “as of the day all the yeerks on Earth kicked it. No one’s heard from Visser One or her forces since.”
“Anati. That’s far away, isn’t it.” Marco doesn’t wait for confirmation. “And if I wanted to, say, send a message to Anati…?”
Tom considers for a minute. “Find Alloran. He’ll know how.”
So Marco goes to Ax. Just to Ax. He’s getting closer and closer to the others all finding out about this, but… it’s his mom. His problem. He doesn’t want to trouble the others, who all deserve their rest.
Ax, however, seems to be bored out of his mind. He seizes on Marco’s “mission” with enthusiasm, hacking every open-circuit camera he can get his hands on in about two hours flat.
Between Tobias being at school for several hours a day and Jake having essentially ordered them all to take a break, Ax has a lot of time on his hands. It takes him less than three days to catch sight of a very familiar human morph — tall, balding, with a commanding smile — and figure out where Alloran has been hiding. The paper trail takes a little more tracing from there, but eventually he gets a hit on a four-star hotel whose penthouse is currently being paid for by a Yeerk Empire shell corporation… and whose penthouse guest has already been reprimanded twice for stealing too many tiny Danishes from the breakfast bar.
Alloran listens to Marco, and even seems sympathetic, but insists that, as long as they don’t know what killed the yeerks on Earth, he’s not going to contact the yeerks elsewhere to let them know so that they can start invading Earth all over again. Which is when Marco reluctantly gets the others involved, on the assumption that one of them will know how so many yeerks ended up kicking the bucket all at once.
Chapman, when asked, immediately blames the oatmeal crisis that was underway at the time when the yeerks died. However, he has no proof to back up this theory, so he’s not much use.
Tom blames the whole thing on inbreeding. He does not listen to Ax when Ax points out there’s no way a lack of genetic diversity could kill a whole species that quickly.
Jake comes up with an elaborate explanation about them having all died of the common cold. Rachel pokes fun at him for plagiarizing War of the Worlds, until Cassie points out that technically a lack of genetic diversity could in theory leave them open to all being affected by the same disease.
Marco and Tobias, it might be said, get a little too far into tinfoil-hat territory around the time they connect an experimental weapons test out of Zone 91 with a fractional shift in the pH of the surrounding atmosphere, which might have something to do with the acid rain out of Nevada… which probably has nothing to do with the yeerks dying.
Alloran makes a single, muttered comment about quantum viruses. He refuses to explain himself, or even to tell anyone what a quantum virus is.
Marco writes the whole thing off as a colossal waste of time. He goes home that night frustrated, defeated, and wondering if Ax is quite bored enough to steal an unused Bug fighter so that they can go on a kamikaze run for Anati.
He wakes up tied to a chair in the middle of an abandoned warehouse.
“Listen to me, parasite,” a very familiar voice says. “We can do this the easy way, where you worm yourself out of him right now and no one has to get hurt… or we can do it the very, very hard way.”
Which is right around the time that Marco remembers that he definitely pretended to be a controller the last time he saw his mom. “Oh crap,” he says out loud, and then, “I’m guessing you’re not a controller anymore.”
“Edriss dropped dead out of the blue, don’t know why. I stole a Bug fighter and came straight here.”
“Huh,” Marco mumbles, “must be genetic.”
Eva raises the dracon beam in her hands until it’s pointed at his head. “Surrender or don’t. Either way, I’ve got no plans for the next three days.”
Marco blinks several times. Judging by the fuzziness of his vision and the cloying taste in the back of his throat, his mom friggin’ drugged him. There’s no telling how long he’s been gone. “I should probably warn you. Jake and a couple of my other very dangerous friends are gonna be looking for me, and I can pretty much guarantee that when they find us—”
“Your threats don’t mean anything to me.” Eva smiles bitterly. “After all, I’m already dead. So I suggest you be quiet, or I might be forced to gag you.”
Marco does as he’s told. Staying quiet and staying put until his mom figures out he’s not a controller either seems preferable to fighting her.
By his extremely crappy system of internal timekeeping, it is either two hours or two days later that there’s a scraping sound on the roof of the warehouse… almost like a bird of prey landing on the corrugated iron. Eva stands up, tilting her head to listen. In the process, she lets the dracon beam drop to her side — which is when the grizzly bear hits her like a freight train. Her body goes skidding across the floor, a small mountain of brown fur and claws following.
“Stop!” Marco bellows. “Rachel, STOP!”
<I’m not gonna kill her, jeez.> Rachel pins Eva to the ground, leaning just enough weight on the arm that holds the dracon beam that the weapon clatters out of her hand.
“She’s not a controller!” Marco says. “Visser One is dead.”
<She has you tied to a chair—>
“Yeah, exactly!” Marco really wishes he could hold up his hands in a placating gesture right now. “Which we both know I could get out of in about two seconds. So if she knew I could morph, why bother trying to capture me alone? If she didn’t know I could morph, why capture me at all?”
Rachel pauses for a second, looking between him and Eva. <I don’t get it. Why did she kidnap you, then?>
“Because she thinks I’m a controller.” Marco raises his eyebrows. “Which means she isn’t.”
<Marco’s logic does appear to be sound.> Ax steps delicately forward. <In that case, we apologize for inconveniencing you, Mrs. Marco’s Mom.>
Rachel sits back on her rump with a whuff of indignation.
Eva climbs slowly to her feet. She looks over at where Marco is awkwardly shifting out of the way so that Ax can cut him loose. “Mijo,” she whispers, “who the hell told you that you were allowed to fight in a war?”
Marco stands up, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Does this mean I’m grounded?”
“Oh yes,” Eva says, pulling him into the tightest hug he’s had in his life. “For the rest of existence.”
It finally happens less with a bang than with a whimper. The mall downtown is expanding to a new wing, and the construction equipment encounters a sinkhole larger than any California has yet seen. After a trackhoe breaks through to an underground cavern the size of a football stadium, the county immediately halts all activity and sends a team of archaeologists down to excavate what everyone is clearly expecting to be ancient ruins… and instead proves to be stranger than anyone imagined.
It is with no small sense of surreality that Cassie finds herself sitting on her couch with her parents to her left and Rachel to her right, watching on TV as scientists dissect a dracon beam while a Discovery Channel personality narrates the debate about lost civilizations and secret underground cities.
“I think it’s high time we gave them some answers,” Rachel says. “Don’t you?” Her tone is casual in a way that Cassie recognizes as an act, covering for some of the same nerves she’s feeling herself.
Cassie thinks of Toby, struggling to keep her colony alive and hidden. Thinks of Tom, too-casual just like Rachel when saying “I’m not crazy, right?” five or six times. Thinks of Ax swinging by twice a day, just to see if there’s anything she needs. Thinks of Aftran, who — she hopes — would’ve wanted this.
And then she picks up the remote and turns off the TV. “Mom. Dad.” She smiles in a way she hopes is reassuring. “There’s something we have to tell you.”
[First of all: I misread this as “set DURING the civil rights movement” and wrote an entire AU accordingly; hope this is okay. Secondly, I justified them being more civically engaged by making all the Animorphs 19 in this AU.]
They plan it carefully, because they have, literally, only one shot at this. Jake takes the time to steal a requisitioned Viet Cong rifle, because — much as Marco hates the extra risk — they need the whole thing to look right. Marco’s the one who flirts with the staff sergeant (who, like him, probably tried to plead out of the draft by dint of “homosexual sympathies”) until Grummald agrees to let him and Jake patrol together.
That evening Jake slings his gun over his shoulder (hoping that no one notices in the low light it’s an AK-47 rather than their standard-issue M16) and promises everyone that he and Marco will be back before 2000 hours.
They march almost half their patrol route before Marco says, “You could still take this chance, you know.”
Jake’s jaw tightens. They’ve had this conversation before. He points out that he’s three months out from making it home free. Marco points out that Jake could get called back for another tour. Jake claims he’ll go AWOL if that happens. Marco starts to protest. Jake states flatly that his decision is final.
They’re at the furthest-out point of their loop when Jake takes the radio off his belt. “PFC Berenson to Arlo Base, do you copy?”
“Falsworth to Berenson, I copy.”
Jake relays their position, then adds, “We can hear something movin’ about hundred yards south of us. Gonna go check it out. Like as not it’s another of those wild pigs, nothin’ to worry about.” He gives a nervous laugh and adds, “If it’s another fuckin’ tiger… speak well of us at home, yeah?”
Marco smirks. He’s seen Jake go toe-to-toe with a realtiger out in this jungle before. The predators should be scared of them, not the other way around.
“Last chance,” Marco says. “You and me, swap right now—”
“How would you carry me back to camp?” Jake asks. And before Marco can come up with an answer, Jake raises the gun and fires.
The first bullet shreds through the flesh of Marco’s right thigh; the second impacts the femur on that same leg and sticks in it with a sickening crack of bone. Jake drops the gun in almost the same motion that he snaps the safety back on, already diving forward to lean pressure on the wounds.
As Marco leans back and does his best not to scream or pass out, Jake yanks out his med kit and does a hasty but effective job of disinfecting the holes then stapling them shut. Last of all he pulls out the pre-prepped shot of heroin and, leaning close to find a vein, slides cool, blissful apathy into Marco’s arm.
“You’ll take care of yourself, right?” Marco slurs as Jake is carrying him back to camp. “You’ll be okay?”
Jake shifts position slightly, wrapping his free hand around Marco’s wrist. “I’ll be back before you know it. I promise.”
The system works brutally fast, offering Marco a disability discharge and preliminary repair surgery before dumping him out of its care and off Uncle Sam’s list of concerns as fast as it possibly can. That suits Marco just fine; he limps out of the hospital on crutches and takes the first opportunity he can to morph, heal, and fly home.
Home, as it turns out, needs his help. Rachel has been leading the team since Jake got drafted, and the half a dozen yeerk projects she’s stopped don’t really make up for the four dead civilians she’s racked up in that time. When Marco demands to know what they were thinking, Tobias snaps at him to give them a break. Marco knows what that’s about. Tobias feels irrationally guilty that he’s got no home address, no draft card, no lottery number hanging over his head. Good, Marco thinks viciously, still unable to forget Jake’s attempt at a cheerful wave as the MedEvac helicopter rose into the air. Tobias should be guilty.
Cassie gets arrested. Tobias is the one who goes to bail her out, because he’s the one with the appearance that will automatically earn the cops’ trust and respect. He finds her sitting in a cell with a dozen other protestors, eye blackened and lip bleeding from a police officer’s baton.
“Did you save any more elephants?” he asks Cassie as they let her out, trying to lighten the mood.
“No,” she says, sounding tired, sounding sad. “Apparently I was trespassing. In a public cafe.”
Not knowing what else to do, Tobias pulls her into an awkward hug. She leans against him, so he guesses he did okay.
“Is she your girlfriend?” one of the cops asks, sounding like he has an opinion on the subject if so.
“That’s none of your fucking business,” Tobias says softly, gently, as he continues to rub small circles into the back of her shoulder.
Marco considers telling Jake just how bad it’s gotten in the real war (as they call it, to tell it apart from this fucking farce of LBJ’s) but finds he can’t come up with the words. Even their system of codes might not be enough to protect them, if a controller intercepted one of the letters. That’s the excuse Marco uses, anyway. The truth is that Jake’s letters are relentlessly cheerful in a way that Marco knows is a lie, and some combination of not wanting him to worry and sheer passive-aggression lead Marco to match Jake tone-for-tone.
Let me know if you want out. Ax and I will be there in an instant, Marco scrawls at the bottom of a typewritten page.
It’s not so bad over here, Jake answers. And anyway, we’ve gotta keep a low profile. Remember?
Rachel does not, it would appear, remember the part about keeping a low profile. They’re all angry, every single one of them, when the random asswipe calls Cassie an unrepeatable word. Cassie herself accepts it with a hard swallow and a dismissive look, and Marco settles for shouting back a couple insults of his own.
Rachel, on the other hand, feels the need to morph grizzly bear and bite said asswipe’s arm hard enough to break it. She doesn’t seem to care that there are two other witnesses present, or that the others are all shouting for her to stop.
She stops short of killing him. She even demorphs on her own, and goes charging out the back door of the automat into the empty lot beyond.
Marco throws caution to the wind and follows. “What was that?”
She whirls around, hair flying everywhere, tears on her face. “Why the fuck are we fighting so hard to save this country, huh? Huh?”
Marco runs a hand over his hair, unpleasantly surprised for the umpteenth time to remember it’s so short. At least the U.S. Army cutting it all off gave the neighborhood punks one less reason to call him a hippie queer and kick the shit out of him. Silver linings.
“I can fight my own battles, you know,” Cassie says quietly, stepping up next to Marco.
Rachel scrubs both hands over her eyes, sniffing harshly. “Was he…?”
“Not a controller.” Cassie smiles tightly. “Just a jerk.”
“I’d do it even if he was a controller,” Rachel says.
Which is why, feeling like an asshole the whole time but knowing it has to be done, Marco calls for a vote of no confidence against Rachel the very next day.
“This is because I’m a woman, isn’t it?” Rachel leans close to Marco’s face, pointing a shaking finger at him. “Because I’m some weak little female who can’t handle power in your eyes!”
It’s so wildly untrue that Marco almost laughs, but he’s pretty sure that then Rachel would kill him. “It’s because you’re out of control,” he whispers. “Because I don’t trust you not to get us killed. Because you’re one of my best friends and I don’t actually want you to die, but that’s the way you’re headed right now.”
“Rachel…” Cassie says. Whatever she’s about to say gets interrupted when the phone rings inside her house. Looking pathetically grateful for the excuse, she runs to go get it.
<This would just be a temporary measure,> Ax says, halfway between asking Marco and assuring Rachel, <until Prince Jake can come home.>
“Exactly.” Marco nods. “And he’ll be back in a matter of weeks.”
Tobias flutters, shifts, preens feathers. At last he says, <Rachel, I… I love you. But I want you to be safe, and…>
She rounds on him. “You too, then? I have to be kept safe? You don’t think I’m up for this? I should just stay home and embroider handkerchiefs and leave the fighting to the men?”
“You want Cassie to lead?” Marco babbles. “Let’s have Cassie in charge. I love that plan. That’s the plan where more people don’t die, let’s go with that plan.”
<I think that’s…> Tobias trails off.
Cassie is standing in the doorway, phone still in hand, corkscrew cord stretching away into the house. She doesn’t seem to know she has it, because both her arms are wrapped around herself where she stands in the doorway and rocks slightly as she cries.
Marco feels all the air punched out of his lungs. He knows what she’s going to say, well before she finally finds the words.
It was fast. Jake’s mom repeats that seven or eight times. Single shot to the forehead, no warning. Body lost to the Mekong River. It was fast. Jake’s mom says it again, and Marco feels a curl of disgust underneath the rage. Of course it was fast; anything else wouldn’t have killed him. They’re Animorphs. Anything short of a bullet in the brainpan would’ve been no more than a momentary inconvenience for Jake.
<I don’t understand,> Ax says after the funeral.
<Yeah.> Tobias’s voice is dull. <None of us do.>
<No, I…> He glances at all of them at once. <I don’t understand why Prince Jake’s grandmother took issue with Rachel’s family being in attendance. When I asked her myself, she…> He pauses, sensing that this is sensitive ground. <She called Rachel’s mother ‘the divorcée’ more than once.>
“Yep.” Rachel bites out the word. “That about sums it up.”
<But I don’t understand.> Ax’s main eyes crinkle in a frown. <Unless I have the word wrong, this simply refers to the termination of the relationship between herself and your father.>
“It does.” Rachel sighs. “You got a problem with that?”
<They no longer wished to be wed, and so they were not. What does that have to do with Prince Jake’s grandmother?>
“I don’t know, Ax. I really don’t.”
<But why was she angered by your mother’s presence, but not similarly angered by your father’s?>
“Yeah,” Rachel says. “All really good questions. If you ever find any answers, be sure to let the rest of us know.”
Their argument seems so small, so silly now, Rachel thinks. She and Marco are sitting side-by-side a hundred yards up in an enormous pine overlooking the cemetery, watching through raptor eyes as Jake’s parents go through the last of the motions for the burial of an empty coffin. Then again, the entire Vietnam War seems horrifyingly petty in light of what’s happening with the yeerks, and that didn’t stop the two of them from bickering before.
<During the battles, Cassie makes the calls,> Rachel says. <She tells us when to attack, when to retreat, when to change the plan on the fly. The rest of the time, we vote. Yeah?>
<Agreed.> Marco shifts, talons scratching the bark. <First motion to put to the group: VA hospitals.>
Rachel glances over, a sharp twitch of her eagle neck. <What about them?>
<They’re full of wounded and disabled soldiers, and…> Marco lets out a laugh that is full of pain, not mirth. <And, and it’s funny. But maybe the worst fucking thing about being in Vietnam is that there are no yeerks. Not anywhere in the armed forces, anyway. Because why bother? The U.N. doesn’t give a shit about us, our country doesn’t give a shit about us, our own towns hated us so much they picked us to send off to die. We leave home where we get called hippie scum by the older generation, we go to kill some poor clueless kids who are trying to kill us back, we get home only to get spat on by hippie scum who call us babykillers. And even the yeerks don’t care about us, because no one else does. Which is downright hilarious, when you think about it.>
<You want to recruit more Animorphs.> Rachel’s plenty smart; she figures it out. <And you want to start where you know the yeerks won’t be. Start with people who already have military training.>
<I know a guy. From the Army. James. Sniper bullet took out his spine somewhere around the stomach area. He’s smart. Tough. Decent. Doesn’t entertain fools. He’d be a start.>
<Let’s put it to the group.> Rachel opens her wings. <Nothing much else for us to see around here, anyway.>
<Prince Cassie, do you ever… ever wonder what will happen if we win?> Ax asks one day.
She takes a hand off her pitchfork, beckoning him further into the barn. “I do. I assume you do too?”
<My people have very different customs from yours.> He steps delicately between the cages. <And some which are much the same. We have a term, vecol, which…> He shakes his head, a very human gesture. <It doesn’t matter. I worry sometimes, though. What my people might think of the team we now have. What you, my friends, might think of my people when you learn.>
Cassie leans the pitchfork against the corner between a post and the first horse stall. “I’m pretty sure if we win, we’ll claim Tobias was leading us the whole time.” She smiles. “He’ll hate that, of course, but pretty much any alternative would be worse.”
<You wouldn’t even acknowledge Prince Jake’s leadership?>
“Oh, we’d honor his memory, to be sure, if we could.” She takes a breath, feeling Ax’s fear — that her entire species will be measured and found wanting, for its outdated and terrible beliefs — and tries to find words. “Jake’s parents are Jewish. Marco’s mother is Latina. Rachel and I are female, and neither of us has the good white Protestant family to be fully American. James and Timmy and the others aren’t even allowed to have human rights in the U.S., much less…” She grimaces. “It’s not his fault, but Tobias…”
<Tobias is half andalite.> Ax says it with pride rather than defensiveness.
“And yet, he — or his human shape — also looks like the people you see on TV.” She raises her eyebrows. “You have to have noticed that none of the people on any of the shows look like most of us.”
<You are fighting against this, though.> Ax gestures to the Black Power poster Cassie’s dad hung above the refrigerator that holds their feeder mice. <You take the time to fight these battles, as well as those against the yeerks.>
“It’s like Toby said.” Cassie shrugs. “I want us to have a place to come back to where we can be safe, once the war is done.”
<I understand,> Ax says. <Or rather, I think I do. Maybe it would be best for me to explain to you how we are taught to think of vecols, and maybe you could tell me how it is I can help this other fight of yours.>
Cassie takes his hand in both of hers. “Maybe I can help in your fight, while we’re at it. After all, there are infinite battles. As long as we don’t lose hope, we can keep fighting forever.”
I will never not be delighted by the first English description of an opossum:
“An Opassom hath an head like a Swine, and a taile like a Rat, and is of the bignes of a Cat. Under her belly she hath a bagge, wherein she lodgeth, carrieth, and sucketh her young.”
There’s a big chunk of the Evangelical right that believes good white Christians should adopt poor foreign children and Americanize them, hopefully a Republican president doesn’t suddenly separate thousands of such children from their parents.
